None of this should be much of a surprise. There has always been the possibility of bad actors being involved with Tor. In addition, the Tor software is compli

None of this should be much of a surprise. There has always been the possibility of bad actors being involved with Tor. In addition, the Tor software is complicated enough that there undoubtedly will be bugs in it. This is "you bet your life" serious. However, both the architecture and the implementation of software must be perfect for that to succeed. It's pretty easy for one bug to mean "game over". People using Tor just don't have a chance when it comes to dealing with the NSA, FSB, GCHQ or any similar state actors. Even allowing for inevitable government bureaucracy and incompetence, the disparity in resources can just be staggering. A big agency can easily, easily afford to devote 100 full time people to one high value target. Those are not odds I'd like to bet against. In the bigger picture, the NSA doesn't give a rats ass about either Silk Road or about child pornography (at least I hope they don't). Which is why an "academic institution" was enlisted to help out the FBI with this. But if I was a dissident or protester in Turkey, Syria, Russia, or any of a large number of authoritarian countries, I certainly wouldn't use Tor. Not if my life and the life of my family was at risk.